Guest: Peter Winick / Guest: Peter Winick

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Tyler Oakley and Lilly Singh -- together they have about 14 million subscribers. It was reported by NewMediaRockStars.com that the campaign will feature, "commercials, billboards, bus ads, magazine print pieces and more."

Singh whose channel features her original character oriented comedy, plus celebrity interviews and more... uses the tagline, "Give Life Character" while Oakley's uses, "Dare To BE You."

If Are You a Victim of Ad Fraud on YouTube, You May Never Know How Much It Costs You

Earlier this week I reported on research that shows that YouTube is great at detecting view fraud within its system but associated ad fraud is not detected at the same rate.

The research shows that advertisers bear the burden here. I spoke with Mohamed Ahmed and Roberto Gonzalez of NEC today (Sept 24, 2015), two of the seven authors of this report. Their pre-published paper can be found here (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.08874v1.pdf). They provided additional background and insight into their work.

The research started as the master's thesis of lead author Miriam Marceal.

Our extended conversation covered the methods used and the insights gleaned while they probed the YouTube ecosystem. A ecosystem which is largely a "black box" to researchers, YouTubers, and advertisers. This work is notable and interesting and is part of a larger effort to quantify and understand the ad tech environment that more and more of our online lives depend upon.

On Sept 22nd, 2015 I reached out to YouTube via Twitter asking them to make someone available to respond to the research but have had no reply.

RESEARCHERS:

Miriam Marciel NEC Labs Europe miriam.marciel @neclab.eu

Ruben Cuevas Universidad Carlos III de Madrid rcuevas @it.uc3m.es

Albert Banchs IMDEA Networks Institute Universidad Carlos III de Madrid albert.banchs @imdea.org

Roberto Gonzalez NEC Labs Europe Roberto.Gonzalez @neclab.eu

Stefano Traverso Politecnico di Torino stefano.traverso @polito.it

Mohamed Ahmed NEC Labs Europe Mohamed.Ahmed @neclab.eu

Arturo Azcorra IMDEA Networks Institute Universidad Carlos III de Madrid arturo.azcorra @imdea.org

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Robert Cookson, Digital Media Correspondent reported in the Financial Times (Sept. 22, 2015) that, "Google has been charging marketers for advertisements it places on YouTube even when the video platform’s fraud-detection systems identify that a “viewer” is a robot rather than a human being." http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/53ac3fd0-604e-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html

Cookson's reportage is based on a research paper (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.08874v1.pdf) published July 31, 2015 by a group of seven European researchers. Their key finding when looking at several different video portals paraphrased by Cookson, "Google’s core advertising engine charged the researchers for the bot visits even though YouTube was clearly able to identify them as fake."

The research concludes, "In summary, we conclude that YouTube uses a seemingly permissive detection mechanism to discount fake monetized views. This exposes advertisers to... burden the risk of fraud. [While] Conversely, the public view counter is much more discriminative, demonstrating that YouTube has effective means to identify fake views."

The channel/network that receives the fake views is also penalized, "YouTube severely penalizes the uploader of the video by suspending her Adsense account, preventing the uploader from monetizing any of the videos associated to the suspended account" even when some of them were legitimate.

Researchers:

Miriam Marciel NEC Labs Europe [email protected]

Ruben Cuevas Universidad Carlos III de Madrid [email protected]

Albert Banchs IMDEA Networks Institute Universidad Carlos III de Madrid [email protected]

Roberto Gonzalez NEC Labs Europe [email protected]

Stefano Traverso Politecnico di Torino [email protected]

Mohamed Ahmed NEC Labs Europe [email protected]

Arturo Azcorra IMDEA Networks Institute Universidad Carlos III de Madrid [email protected]

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Sports are Games, Video Games are Games

Like fans watching sports, kids watch other people play video games. Like fans watching sports, it is often someone who might be a professional or at least a gifted amateur.

Like televised sports there is play by play and color commentary... typically provided by the person who is playing the game... which can be very interesting since you gain some insight into what they are doing, thinking or planning.

Desktop Streaming

Google's previously available gaming platform allowed desktop gamers to livestream their games, and allowed any users with a web browser to watch both pre-recorded and live gaming.

There are 100's of games out there and the quality of the "game play" varies by title and by skill of the player. Last week I reported on how popular YouTuber TDM uses Minecraft to create videos that are really mini stories or mini movies; entertaining while showing off gaming prowess.

Mobile Streaming

Ryan Wyatt (YouTube's head of global gaming content, dateline Sept 17 Tokyo) announced support for creating live streamed games from mobile devices. With Mr. Wyatt's announcement gamers looking to show off in real time (live streaming) can now do so from a mobile Android device (and soon IOS).

This comes on the heels of other mobile streaming announcements in the past few months including services like Blab, Periscope and Meerkat. The services are analogous other than one offers video from a camera whereas the offers video recorded from a device's screen.

It will be interesting to see if companies and brands start to including live streaming games, including mobile gaming within their content strategy. It will also be interesting to see how the gaming competition between Twitch and YouTube plays out; Twitch wins or YouTube wins.